Peter Lorre - Der Verlorene aka The Lost One (1951)

The film opens in a displaced persons (refugees and released prisoners) camp in Germany after the WWII armistice. Peter Lorre is Dr. Karl Neumeister a world-weary, strangely acting, chain-smoking, hard-drinking and hard-working physician in the camp. The loner doctor is confronted with his sordid past when a refugee by the name of Nowak (Karl John) shows up posing as a chemist and is assigned by the barrack's head to assist the doctor in giving inoculations. The film goes into flashback when the doctor and his mysterious new assistant go into the canteen to get stinking drunk and talk about their coincidental meeting.







After years of dreary labor in Hollywood as a professional "evil foreigner," Lorre went home to Germany to write, direct and star in this dark, dreamlike narrative in which he plays the ultimate Peter Lorre character: a Nazi mad doctor sex murderer. The film is an ironic commentary by Lorre, the reluctant impersonator of psychopaths, on the nature of true psychopathology as embodied in the amoral Nazi regime. It's also an ingenious melding of the sort of B-film noir that Lorre had specialized in for years as an actor (Maltese Falcon, Stranger on the Third Floor, Quicksand) and the impressionistic Nouvelle Roman/Nouvelle Vague influenced art film just picking up steam on the continent (shades of Orpheus, Wild Strawberries, and Last Year at Marienbad can be seen in its shadowy enfolding of past/present and dream/reality.) Though somewhat uncertain in balancing himself between his roles as principal actor and director (the motivations of some of the other characters are somewhat murky, for instance, and it's rather a shock to see Peter Lorre so continually being the object of women's lustful attentions) this was clearly a man with the makings of an ingenious and original filmmaker. It's a shame this film isn't better known, and that Lorre never got the chance to make another. (IMDB comment)









El hombre perdido
El Dr. Rothe es un investigador científico alemán que durante la 2ª Guerra Mundial descubre que su novia ha estado vendiendo sus secretos científicos a los británicos. En un ataque de resentimiento, la mata, pero no es castigado por el delito, que es calificado por las autoridades nazis como homicidio justificado. Sin consuelo por la traición de su amada, Rothe vaga por el país, matando a cada mujer que le recuerda a su amor perdido - mientras que la Gestapo obedientemente sigue cubriendo sus huellas, incluso lo declara legalmente muerto para que pueda escapar de prisión. En un giro de la trama digna de Fritz Lang, Lorre se enjuicia a sí mismo...

Poco después de protagonizar el extraordinario “M, el vampiro de Düsseldorf” a las órdenes de Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre abandonó Alemania forjándose una prestigiosa carrera internacional en Francia, Inglaterra y Estados Unidos. Cuando regresó a Alemania después de la II Guerra Mundial, llevó al cine su propio relato: “Der verlorene” basado en la historia real de otro asesino en serie. En una Alemania recuperándose de sus profundas heridas, el único film como realizador de Lorre fue mal recibido y peor comprendido. Ha tenido que pasar más de medio siglo para que se empiece a reconocer esta extraordinaria obra.





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